On Fri, 13 Aug 2004 23:37:37 -0600, Fred Bauder fredbaud@ctelco.net wrote:
Blocking is just that, a possibly ineffective remedy should he use a wide range of dynamic addresses. Following dispute resolution you can certainly see him banned and blocked as much as possible, indeed under our personal attacks policy he can be blocked immediately. I gather you don't want to do it yourself, but a new administrator will be elected and all that can be done on that front will probably be done.
I have sometimes done it myself a few times, and the other admin has also done it a few times. But we seem to be in shortage of human time if he continues.
One other question would be "is the personal attacks policy limited to the English Wikipedia?"
Blocking does not address the underlying issue that he can in the policially and religiously charged athmoshere in Iran potentially make good on his threats. This is an issue that needs to be handled through institutions such as the Persian Academy (if indeed you belong to such an organization). Absurd denunciations need to be recognized as such, not taken seriously by those in authority. This attitude takes a while to develop and requires exposure of this sort of thing in public forums.
I don't think he can do much with the Academy, but his threats simply hurt me and possibly also others, they have just resulted in one good contributor saying bye-bye because of "the dirty atmosphere".
(BTW, I'm not a "member" of the Persian Academy. That requires one to be a real expert in the language, which I'm not, but I'm a member of the its Language and Computers council.)
If indeed you have made edits and expressed opinions which are vulnerable to successful attack by political and religious authorities themselves outsiders such as ourselves can do some good by publicizing the matter and exposing it. This can be small comfort in practical terms.
Nothing like this has ever been raised, since I usually stick to facts and try to follow NPOV, but even the writing also about other side's POV is sometimes very offensive to some of the people living or born in this part of the world. On Wikipedia, I've been called a Persian Chauvinist by Pan-Turkists, Anti-Islamic Republic and Anti-Khomeini by a carpet dealer who possibly did business with the Iranian government, pro-Khomeini by a person insisting of inserting some sexual rulings that Ayatollah Khomeini shares with other Shia clerics into the Khomeini article, and finally pro-Islamic Republic, anti-Persian, pro-Turkic, and pro-Arab by this late guy. It seems that they oppose neutrality. That may also be because I work openly on Wikipedia, and don't hide my identity, so they can have a real face to attack.
Anyway, on the English Wikipedia, I would really appreciate if more people can get active on Iran-related articles like [[Persian Gulf]], [[South Azerbaijan]], and [[Ruhollah Khomeini]], so I can take a little rest from being blamed.
roozbeh